SparkNotes: Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead: Plot Overview Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead Tom Stoppard Context Character List Rosencrantz and Guildenstern wander through a featureless wilderness, flipping coins, which keep coming up heads. Each time a coin lands on heads, Rosencrantz wins it. While Guildenstern worries about the improbability of a coin landing on heads so many times in a row, Rosencrantz happily continues flipping. Guildenstern wonders if they have entered a world where the laws of chance and time are absent. The pair struggles to recall why they are traveling and remember only that a messenger called them. They encounter a troupe of actors, known as the Tragedians. The leader of the group, called the Player, indicates that the Tragedians specialize in sexual performances and gives Rosencrantz and Guildenstern the chance to participate for a fee. Guildenstern turns the improbable coin-flipping episode to their advantage by offering the Player a bet. The Player loses but claims he cannot pay. Guildenstern asks for a play instead.

Guildenstern starts to leave as the Tragedians prepare, and Rosencrantz reveals that the most recently flipped coin landed tails-up. The scene changes suddenly. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are now inside Elsinore, the royal castle of Denmark, watching as Hamlet and Ophelia burst onstage and leave in opposite directions. Mistaking Rosencrantz for Guildenstern, Claudius explains that he sent for the pair so that they could ascertain what is bothering Hamlet, their childhood friend. Bewildered, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern discuss how they might probe Hamlet for the cause of his supposed madness. They play a game of question-and-answer, further confusing themselves about their purpose and even their identities. Guildenstern suggests that he pretend to be Hamlet while Rosencrantz questions him. They realize that Hamlet’s disturbed state is due to the fact that his father, the former king of Denmark, has recently died, and the throne has been usurped by Hamlet’s uncle, Claudius, who also has married Hamlet’s mother, Gertrude. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern overhear Hamlet speaking riddles to Polonius.

Hamlet confuses Rosencrantz and Guildenstern with an enigmatic speech. Polonius comes in to tell Hamlet that the Tragedians have arrived. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern despair about how little they learned of Hamlet’s feelings. They cannot decide whether he is insane. Polonius, Hamlet, and the Tragedians enter, and Hamlet announces that there will be a play the next day. Hamlet leaves, and Rosencrantz, Guildenstern, and the Player discuss the possible causes of Hamlet’s strange behavior. The Player departs while Rosencrantz and Guildenstern discuss what happens after death. As Claudius, Gertrude, Polonius, and Ophelia enter, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern explain that Hamlet wants them all to attend the play. The group leaves, but Hamlet enters. Not noticing Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, Hamlet wonders whether he should commit suicide. Ophelia enters, praying. After a short conversation, she and Hamlet exit. Alfred, one of the Tragedians, arrives dressed as Gertrude.

The other Tragedians enter to rehearse their play, which parallels Claudius’s rise to power and marriage to Gertrude. Ophelia enters, crying, followed by an angry Hamlet, who tells her to become a nun, then quickly departs. Claudius and Polonius enter and leave with Ophelia. The Player explains the tragic aspects of the Tragedians’ play, which metaphorically retells the recent events at Elsinore and foreshadows the deaths of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. They discuss whether death can be adequately represented on stage. The scene goes black. In darkness, voices indicate that the play has disturbed Claudius. The next day, Claudius and Gertrude ask Rosencrantz and Guildenstern to find Hamlet, who has killed Polonius. Alone again, the pair concocts a plan to trap Hamlet with their belts, but they fail as Hamlet enters from an unexpected direction and immediately leaves, carrying the dead Polonius. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern call Hamlet back, but he refuses to say what he has done with Polonius’s body.

Hamlet accuses Rosencrantz and Guildenstern of being Claudius’s tools. Hamlet escapes as Claudius enters, only to be brought back onstage under guard. The scene shifts outdoors, where Guildenstern tells Rosencrantz that they have to escort Hamlet to England. Hamlet arrives in conversation with a soldier. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern reluctantly depart. On the boat to England, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern wonder where they are and whether they might be dead. They notice Hamlet sleeping nearby, remember their mission, and consider what to do when they arrive. Guildenstern has a letter from Claudius, which reveals that Hamlet is to be executed in England. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern cannot decide what to do. As the pair sleeps, Hamlet switches the letter they were carrying with one he has written. The next morning, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern awake and hear music coming from barrels onboard the ship. To their surprise, the Tragedians emerge from the barrels just before pirates charge the ship. Hamlet, the Player, Rosencrantz, and Guildenstern jump into the barrels, and the lights go down.

When the lights come back up, Rosencrantz, Guildenstern, and the Player come out of the barrels. Hamlet is gone. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern tell the Player about the letter and rehearse what they will say to the English king. Guildenstern discovers that the letter now states that Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are to be executed. The Tragedians encircle the pair. Despairing about his fate, Guildenstern takes a knife from the Player and stabs him. The Player cries out and falls, apparently dead. The Tragedians clap as the Player jumps up. He says that his death was a mediocre performance while showing Guildenstern that the knife was actually a stage prop. The Player describes the different deaths that his troupe can perform while the Tragedians act out those deaths onstage. Rosencrantz applauds, and the light shifts, leaving Rosencrantz and Guildenstern alone. Rosencrantz breaks down and leaves as he realizes his death is near. Guildenstern wonders how they were caught in this situation, lamenting that they failed to seize an opportunity to avert their fate. Guildenstern exits.

The light changes, revealing the dead bodies of Claudius, Gertrude, Hamlet, and Laertes. Horatio arrives and delivers the final speech of Shakespeare’s Hamlet, as the music rises and lights fall. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead or browse other Shmoopers' Questions In A Nutshell Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead was Tom Stoppard 's breakthrough play. It was a huge critical and commercial success, making him famous practically overnight. Though written in 1964, the play was published in 1967, and it played on Broadway in 1968, where it won the Tony for best play. The play cleverly re-interprets Shakespeare 's Hamlet from the point of view of two minor characters: Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.

The Laurel-and-Hardy -like pair are totally incidental to the action of Hamlet, subject to the whims of the King Claudius – who gets them to betray Hamlet – and then tricked by Hamlet into delivering a letter that condemns them to death (check out the Shmoop's guide to Hamlet; it's useful to know the basic plot). Stoppard's play turns Hamlet on its head by giving these two the main roles and reducing all of Shakespeare's major characters (including Hamlet) to minor roles. Written around and in-between the lines of Shakespeare's play, Stoppard brilliantly takes the main concerns of contemporary theater – absurdism, the inevitability of death, breakdown in communication and feeling – and inserts them into the text of a much earlier play. The absurdist tradition that Stoppard is writing in suggests another enormous influence: Samuel Beckett 's Waiting for Godot (1952). Beckett's play is just as important to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead as Hamlet is.

Waiting for Godot consists of two tramps sitting on-stage bantering back and forth and waiting for someone named Godot, who never comes (check out Shmoop's guide to Waiting for Godot for more detail). Waiting for Godot changed theater by undermining many of its traditional values: plot, characterization, and dialogue that move the action of the play forward. By portraying the act of "waiting" on stage, Beckett's play also opened up new ideas about meta-theatrics (plays that are about plays – how they're made, how they're seen, and/or how they interact with society). Since the characters in Godot are in the same position as the audience – waiting for something to happen – much of their dialogue works on multiple levels and seems to hint at awareness on the part of the tramps that they're actually two characters in a play. Stoppard wrote Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead in this absurdist and meta-theatrical tradition. It is very much influenced by Beckett, and much of the silly dialogue between Rosencrantz and Guildenstern simply would not have been seen in the theater before Waiting for Godot.

It's as if Stoppard uses the innovations that Beckett brought to contemporary theater in order to pry open the minor Shakespearean characters of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. Some critics think that Stoppard was too much under the influence of Beckett at this point in his career, but we think that Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead is something unique and independent of both Waiting for Godot and Hamlet. It is an almost universally acknowledged masterpiece of contemporary theater. Why Should I Care? If life were a play, most of us would be minor characters in it. Sure, we might imagine it differently, but very few of us live our lives as Hamlets. In general, we more closely resemble the silly characters that only occasionally get caught up in the central action, characters like Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. We call ourselves "masters of our domains," but when we think about how many things in our lives we actually have control over, it's not necessarily a long list. If there's one thing that we don't have control over at all, one thing that's absolutely certain, it's that we're going to die.

We don't think about this too often – it's not a cheerful subject – but we see and hear about people dying all the time: on the news, in books and plays, in video games, and in our personal lives as well. It's one of the most common things in the world, and yet when you get down to it none of us knows a thing about it. It's a real mystery, not a detective story with an interesting twist at the end, but a real unknown: a mystery that endures. In some ways, it's impossible to think about. Your mind just can't fathom it, and your imagination falls short. Stoppard's play cleverly explores all of these issues surrounding death. It doesn't give us heroic or tragic deaths like we get in Hamlet, but it tries to figure about what's significant when a "minor character" dies – someone unimportant who dies by their own folly. Insignificance, Stoppard seems to argue, is just as important a theme to be explore as significance.

'Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead' 'Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead' MARK KENNEDY Tweet Share This image released by The Acting Company shows Grant Fletcher Prewitt and Ian Gould in "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead." The tells the absurdist story of the Danish Prince's childhood friends, who are sent to spy on Hamlet and end up as confused courtiers navigating the shark-infested waters of the royal court. (AP Photo/The Acting Company, Michael Lamont) More NEW YORK (AP) — Playwright Tom Stoppard's first big hit starred two unlikely heroes — a pair of insignificant characters lifted from "Hamlet." "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead" tells the absurdist story of the Danish Prince's childhood friends, who are sent to spy on Hamlet and end up as confused courtiers navigating the shark-infested waters of the royal court. As the title suggests, the play ends poorly for the pair. But it didn't for Stoppard: It won the best play Tony Award in 1968 and was turned into a film starring Gary Oldman and Tim Roth.

Now The Acting Company, the renowned touring theater troupe that counts Kevin Kline, Patti LuPone and Jeffrey Wright among its alumni, is about to hit the road with "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead," directed by Tony winner John Rando. The twist? It's being performed in repertoire with "Hamlet" and the actors play the same roles in both works. "I love the challenge of it," says Rando, who directed the Broadway hits "A Christmas Story," ''The Wedding Singer" and "Urinetown," for which he won a directing Tony. (Ian Belknap directs the companion "Hamlet.") Both plays are currently in New York City at the Pearl Theatre but early next month hit the road, visiting Wisconsin, Indiana, Michigan, Vermont, Maryland, New York, Virginia, Tennessee, Kentucky, Illinois and Minnesota. Rando, a University of Texas graduate, recalls falling in love with "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead" as a student and waiting for a chance to direct it himself. AP: Tell us about this play. What's it like?

Rando: I think it's an extremely entertaining evening and truly thought-provoking and, of course, funny but also powerful and touching. It's like 'Waiting for Godot.' It has that kind of impact on an audience. In a way, that's what Stoppard did: He wrote 'Waiting for Godot' for these two characters who are stuck in 'Hamlet.' AP: Have you ever met Stoppard? Rando: I met him when I was in college. He came and visited. This was back in 1979. But since that time, I haven't spoken to him. AP: Have you seen the movie version? Rando: I didn't. I knew there was a movie. I decided not to watch it. I did see imagery from it — I saw pictures — and I got a sense of what the movie was like but I decided not to watch it. And hadn't seen a production of it, either. I read it in school, I'd done a few scenes from it in school, but I'd never seen a production.

AP: Doesn't putting "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern" in repertoire with "Hamlet" sort of elevate Stoppard to Shakespeare's level? Rando: I would agree with that. Sure, why not? I think he's an amazing playwright for our time. I think if you wanted to point to a playwright from the '60s, '70s, '80s and '90s and now and you said, 'Who were the great writers of that era?' you would point to Stoppard. AP: Speaking of absurdity, this play arrives at a time when 'Waiting for Godot' and Harold Pinter's 'No Man's Land' are both on Broadway. Are we going through an existential moment? Rando: I don't know why this happened. It just did. I'm always convinced with plays — especially revivals — that producers, directors and actors do them because they want to. And it may be that we're all feeling the same thing. AP: Could "Hamlet" and "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern" ever be performed at the same time? Rando: I suppose if you had two theaters that were connected, I think you could.

Yes, you probably could do it. But you'd have to have two different audiences. I don't know if the timing would work. I don't know if you could get the king over in time to do his scene when he's over there doing their scene. And then how do you get Rosencrantz over there to his scenes? I don't know. It wouldn't work. Forget it. ___ Mark Kennedy can be reached at ___ SparkNotes: Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead: Themes, Motifs & Symbols Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead Tom Stoppard Act I: Beginning of Play to Entrance of Tragedians Themes The Incomprehensibility of the World Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead highlights the fundamental mystery of the world. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern spend the entirety of the play in total confusion, lacking such basic information as their own identities. From the play’s opening, which depicts them as unable to remember where they are headed and how they began their journey, to their very last moments, in which they are bewildered by their imminent deaths, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern cannot understand the world around them.

Their confusion stems from both the sheer randomness of the universe, illustrated by the bizarre coin-tossing episode, and the ambiguous and unclear motives of the other characters, who pop onstage and deliver brief, perplexing speeches before quickly exiting. While Stoppard frequently uses their confusion for comic effect, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern occasionally become so frustrated by the world’s incomprehensibility that they fall into despair. The play ultimately suggests that the prominent role of chance in our lives, coupled with the difficulty of discerning the true intentions and desires of other people, leads to almost paralyzing confusion. Although this experience may sometimes be amusing or seem funny when it happens to others, in the end it is one of the most dreadful aspects of existence. The Difficulty of Making Meaningful Choices The constant confusion in which they find themselves leaves Rosencrantz and Guildenstern feeling unable to make any significant choices in their lives. They are pushed along toward their deaths by what appear to be random forces, and they fail to respond to their circumstances with anything but total passivity. Their lack of agency is underscored by Stoppard’s decision to transport them from scene to scene without any choice on their part.

One minute Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are in the woods with the Tragedians, and the next they are in Elsinore being asked to probe Hamlet’s distressed mind, a request they accept without even understanding what they have been asked to do. Even at the end of Act II, when they ask each other if they should go to England, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern do not make a choice but instead merely continue on the path that has been laid out for them. Since they have already come this far, Rosencrantz says, they may as well keep going. Their passive approach to their lives reflects how difficult it is to make decisions in a world that we do not fully understand, in which any choice can seem meaningless and therefore not worth making. Stoppard demonstrates the danger of this passivity by giving Rosencrantz and Guildenstern the opportunity to make a very meaningful choice, which they fail to do. This moment occurs when they discover that they have a letter ordering Hamlet’s death upon their arrival in England: if they destroy it, Hamlet lives, but if they do nothing, he dies.

While Rosencrantz hesitates about what to do, Guildenstern argues that they should not take any action, since they might not understand what is at stake. Although this decision may seem like an unfeeling rationalization for moral laziness, it is in fact simply an extension of the passivity that has marked Rosencrantz and Guildenstern throughout the play. By failing to make a significant choice when they have the opportunity to do so, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern incur terrible consequences, as Hamlet discovers the letter and switches it with one ordering their deaths rather than his own. Even though deciding which actions we should take in life is at times so difficult that we might be tempted to succumb to total passivity, failing to act is itself a decision, one that the play presents as not merely immoral but self-destructive. The Relationship Between Life and the Stage Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead emphasizes the close connection between real life and the world of theatrical performance.

Numerous features of the play work to underscore this connection, not least of which is the fact that the play asks its audience to assume that the characters from Shakespeare’s Hamlet are real and deserve to have their story told from another perspective. Within the play, the connection between life and the stage is revealed to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern by the presence of the Tragedians, who perform a play that depicts parallel events to those in which the two men find themselves. This play shows that the characters most similar to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are ultimately killed, which is precisely the fate that befalls Stoppard’s main characters. As they watch the play, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern see that the two actors playing the roles parallel their own are dressed exactly as they are. This confuses Rosencrantz so much that he wonders why he recognizes the actor dressed as himself but then tells the actor that he is not who the actor believed he was. In other words, theater reflects life so well that Rosencrantz cannot tell which is which. Guildenstern criticizes the Player for assuming that theatrical performance can depict real feelings, especially the terror of death.

The Player’s response is twofold—he claims that theatrical death is the only kind people believe in because it is what they expect, and then he demonstrates that point to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern by convincingly performing his own death when Guildenstern stabs him with a stage knife. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are completely persuaded by the Player’s performance, which lends credence to his claim that people really do believe in the things that theater has led them to expect. Indeed, the characters only believe in death when it looks theatrical, as Rosencrantz and Guildenstern cannot quite bring themselves to believe in their own impending deaths, for which they are unable to form any expectations. The audience cannot believe in their deaths either, at least according to the logic of the play and the Player, since the audience’s expectation that Rosencrantz and Guildenstern will die is never fulfilled. By refusing to depict their deaths and refusing to give the audience what it knows is coming, Stoppard keeps Rosencrantz and Guildenstern from dying and instead turns them into living literary characters.

Motifs Shakespeare’s Hamlet Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead actively engages with Shakespeare’s Hamlet through quotation and visual cues. Stoppard includes many of Hamlet’s most notable scenes in a way that casts them in a new light. For instance, the most famous portion of Hamlet is the “To be or not to be” soliloquy, Hamlet’s monologue about mortality and whether he should kill himself. Stoppard includes this scene, but it occurs in the background, while Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, in the foreground, wonder whether to approach Hamlet. As Hamlet mulls over his death, they decide that the time is perfect for a casual chat. This belief is deeply at odds with Hamlet’s actual state of mind, which the audience knows but the characters do not. Such dramatic irony is funny, but it serves a larger purpose. Hamlet is regarded as one the greatest works of world literature, but Stoppard’s comic treatment of it shows the importance of viewing Hamlet on its own terms rather than as the apex of literary tradition.

By presenting Hamlet not as a great artifact but as a play that depicts real feelings and complex characters, Stoppard reminds his audience of the power of Shakespeare’s play to speak to us on an individual, human level. The Lord’s Prayer Throughout the play, Guildenstern performs punning riffs on a segment of the Lord’s Prayer, uttered by Jesus in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke and known to many people as the “Our Father” prayer. Guildenstern usually replaces the final word of the phrase give us this day our daily bread with a word that both rhymes with Rosencrantz’s most recent remark and forms a pun on their situation. For instance, after Claudius and Gertrude greet Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, mix up their identities, and ask them to probe Hamlet’s mind, the two become so confused that they can hardly speak straight. Rosencrantz cries out, “Consistency is all I ask!” to which Guildenstern responds, “Give us this day our daily mask.” Guildenstern’s substitution of the word mask for bread is deeply ironic.

In the prayer, Jesus asks God to provide something people need on a daily basis—bread—while Guildenstern asks for something that the two men have too much of—masks, or shields, that prevent their identity from being known. Since even they cannot keep themselves straight, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern would have little need for masks, and thus Guildenstern’s remark is a bleak, almost resigned response to their situation. This ironic reuse of a sacred text parallels Stoppard’s irreverent use of another hallowed literary work, Shakespeare’s Hamlet. Stoppard wants to emphasize the lure of literary works—be they prayers or plays—but he also wants to show the danger of relying on them exclusively to help us solve our problems. People often look to literature in times of need, but Stoppard reminds us that although such works as the Lord’s Prayer or Hamlet may seem universally appealing, they are grounded in specific circumstances and are about specific people, and thus they cannot be applied to any situation indiscriminately.

Guildenstern calls on the Lord’s Prayer when placed in trying situations, but it does him no good, and his punning substitutions point out that there is no piece of literature that can help them through their particular situation. Thus Stoppard reminds his audience that great literature—be it religious or secular—is not a blueprint for how to lead our lives. Rather, literature itself struggles to make sense of the complex business of living in a confusing, often frustrating world. Gambling Scenes of gambling occur repeatedly in Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead and underscore the central role that chance plays in the lives of the characters. The play opens with Guildenstern losing bet after bet to Rosencrantz as the flipped coins keep coming up heads. Later, Guildenstern tricks the Player into accepting a bet that the year of the Player’s birth doubled is an even number, and Rosencrantz tries to cheer up Guildenstern on the ship to England by giving his friend a chance to win the same bet. All this gambling, this reliance on chance rather than individual actions, highlights how much chance drives the lives of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern and how little they do to counteract it.

Although they are frustrated that chance puts them in unmanageable situations, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern take no action to help themselves and instead surrender to chance by relying on gambling. Confronted with the troubling randomness of reality, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern do not try to resist it. Instead, they embrace the very thing that is tormenting them, finding it easier to give in to chance than take the difficult step of actively deciding how best to lead their lives. Symbols The Coins The coins that Rosencrantz and Guildenstern flip at the beginning of the play symbolize both the randomness of the world and the play’s exploration of oppositional forces. The pattern of coin after coin landing heads up defies the expectation that the laws of probability actually do work and that the world makes clear sense. Instead, the coins suggest that the world is ruled by randomness and the occurrence of highly improbable events. The point made by the coins is reiterated by the way that Rosencrantz and Guildenstern get caught up in a string of improbable situations that, from their perspective at least, occur entirely at random and make no sense whatsoever.

Randomness is often contrasted to determinism, the notion that events happen according to some unbreakable plan. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead combines randomness with determinism to suggest that chance seems deterministic. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern feel that they can do nothing to counteract the chance’s determinist force, just as they can do nothing to stop the coins from landing heads up. The coins also stand in for the play’s exploration of oppositional forces. Although the coins land heads up so many times that they may seem one-sided, coins are actually two-sided, a fact the audience is reminded of when a coin lands tails up. This two-sidedness reflects the many sets of opposites in the play, from the division between Guildenstern’s philosophical pessimism and Rosencrantz’s pragmatic optimism to the dual nature of language, which is a source of both pleasurable wit and painful confusion. Imagining the world as a set of opposites is somewhat at odds with the coins’ symbolism of a world dominated by chance, since oppositions impose order on the world. Stoppard resolves this tension by having the oppositions in the play break down.

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern reveal themselves to be more complex and less oppositional than they initially seem, for instance. This breakdown of oppositional forces is reflected in the coins in that the laws of probability suggest that flipped coins should split evenly between heads and tails, but Stoppard shows that such a simple model does not account for the sheer randomness of the world. The Boat Almost the entirety of Act III takes place onboard a boat to England, and Stoppard uses the boat to reflect the experience of living in a universe that is beyond our control. Guildenstern initially responds quite positively to being on the boat, noting that it is pleasurable to give up responsibility and allow oneself to simply be carried along through life. This resignation to life’s randomness is freeing, Guildenstern believes, because it means that we no longer have to worry about whether we are making the right decisions—we can just relax and see where life takes us. The play suggests that this is a naïve and dangerous attitude, however, as Rosencrantz and Guildenstern’s refusal to take any action for themselves will end up getting them killed.

Guildenstern realizes that getting on the boat was a mistake, since giving up their freedom meant that they lost all control over their lives. Simply giving in to the randomness of the world, as well as believing that giving in leads to freedom, are self-destructive gestures. These gestures make us like men on a boat they cannot steer, unable to do anything about our experiences. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern in Hamlet And here give up ourselves, in the full bent To lay our service freely at your feet, To be commanded. (2.2.27-34) Uh, you've got a little something on your nose, guys. Luckily for our amusement, they're as incompetent as they are dishonest; Hamlet sees right through them, and they make good targets for his mockery. It does seem a little harsh for Hamlet to send them off to die, though (as Horatio points out), so they point out Hamlet's weird decision-making process. He hesitates (understatement) to kill Claudius, who arguably deserves it, but doesn't flinch over exterminating his own two friends, who, let's face it, were probably just college students hard up for cash.

Even though Rosencrantz and Guildenstern die before the mass death scene in Act V, Shakespeare works it so that we find out they've been killed at the same time everyone else is dying. A British ambassador shows up in the final scene for the sole purpose of saying, "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead" (5.2.411). Contemporary playwright Tom Stoppard liked this line so much that he wrote a play from the perspective of the two characters and titled it Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead .

Movie Review - - Review/Film; A Cockeyed Perspective On Elsinore - NYTimes.com Review/Film; A Cockeyed Perspective On Elsinore By VINCENT CANBY Published: February 8, 1991 Acting on the assumption that every exit is an entrance someplace else, Tom Stoppard, the English playwright, wrote his language-giddy comedy "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead." The play, a hit in both London and New York in 1968, offers a cockeyed view of the events in "Hamlet" as witnessed by two characters who are as peripheral to themselves as they are to the Shakespearean text. They are expendable. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Hamlet's old school chums, called to Elsinore by the King and Gertrude to try to jolly the prince out of his doldrums. They wind up infuriating everybody and, when last seen, they are escorting their friend to England at the King's command. In the hierarchy of characters of importance, they rank somewhat above spear-carriers, more or less on a par with message-bearers.

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern exist to keep things moving, and as many productions of "Hamlet" have demonstrated (including Franco Zeffirelli's current film version), they aren't absolutely necessary for that. Yet, when they do show up in a production, they get short shrift. They're not only uncharacterized, as Shakespeare wrote them, but they are finally hanged for their trouble, offstage. Mr. Stoppard's idea of looking at "Hamlet" through the eyes of this pair of pale, bewildered fall guys is a promising one, which started out, apparently, as a one-act sketch. By the time he turned it into a full-length play, his thoughts had ripened, helped along, it would seem, by the work of Samuel Beckett, especially "Waiting for Godot." In Mr. Stoppard's view, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are two nonentities lost in time and space, victims of circumstances they never comprehend and thus are unable to escape. They arrive in Elsinore, and, in scenes incorporated from Shakespeare (totaling about 250 lines), meet the royals and eventually depart with Hamlet for England.

It is the playwright's conceit that, en route to the castle, they encounter the traveling players who later figure prominently in the original drama. It's a good thing, too, since the leader of this band, called the Player, an eloquent and ratty con artist, is the most engaging character in the Stoppard variation. Once in Elsinore, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern move around the castle trying vainly to figure out what's going on. They are intended to recall a couple of classic burlesque buffoons, but they philosophize too much, and they aren't swatted around enough, to be very satisfying as low comedians. Instead, they insist on talking above their station, with much time devoted to discussions of life's probabilities and purpose. The Czechoslovak-born Mr. Stoppard has an acute appreciation for the possibilities of English, which too often go unrecognized by people native to the language. He delights in sounds and meanings, in puns, in flights of words that soar and swoop as if in visual display. On the stage, this sort of thing can be great fun, an end in itself, somewhat like music.

In the more realistic medium of film, so many words can numb the eardrums and weigh upon the eyelids like old coins. This is the effect of "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead," the new movie, which Mr. Stoppard not only adapted but also directed. The film looks stylish and is enthusiastically acted by Gary Oldman (Rosencrantz), Tim Roth (Guildenstern) and, in particular, Richard Dreyfuss as the Player. Although Mr. Stoppard says he has made Rosencrantz and Guildenstern more active than they were in his play, they are still feckless pawns whose word games no longer seem all that provocative or even entertaining. These guys drone, which doesn't serve the bleaker purposes of the text. The words have the effect of absorbing all thought. The realism of the settings, including some beautiful Yugoslav scenery, also doesn't help. Rather, it calls attention to the abstract nature of the play without supporting it. The movie has amusing moments. Nobody seems to be able to remember which man is Rosencrantz and which is Guildenstern. Even they become confused.

They happen to be behind the arras when Hamlet skewers the meddlesome old Polonius. At one point Rosencrantz seems to invent the double-decker sandwich. But the jokes are small ones, and largely academic. As happens at the opera, one usually laughs (if one laughs at all) not because something is funny, but because one has successfully recognized that it is supposed to be funny. "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead," which has been rated PG (Parental guidance suggested), has some partial nudity. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead Written and directed by Tom Stoppard; director of photography, Peter Biziou; edited by Nicolas Gaster; music by Stanley Myers; production designer, Vaughan Edwards; produced by Michael Brandman and Emanuel Azenberg; released by Cinecom Entertainment Group . Running time: 118 minutes. This film is rated PG. Rosencrantz . . . Gary Oldman Guildenstern . . . Tim Roth The Player . . . Richard Dreyfuss Hamlet . . . Iain Glen Polonius . . . Ian Richardson Claudius . . . Donald Sumpter Gertrude . . .

Joanna Miles Ophelia . . . Joanna Roth Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead (1990) - IMDb IMDb There was an error trying to load your rating for this title. Some parts of this page won't work property. Please reload or try later. X Beta I'm Watching This! Keep track of everything you watch; tell your friends. Error Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead ( 1990 ) PG | Two minor characters from the play 'Hamlet' stumble around unaware of their scripted lives and unable to deviate from them. Director: From $2.99 (SD) on Amazon Video ON DISC Famous Directors: From Sundance to Prominence From Christopher Nolan to Quentin Tarantino and every Coen brother in between, many of today's most popular directors got their start at the Sundance Film Festival . Here's a list of some of the biggest names to go from Sundance to Hollywood prominence.

a list of 38 titles created 21 Sep 2012 a list of 47 titles created 02 Mar 2014 a list of 21 titles created 10 months ago a list of 25 titles created 9 months ago a list of 42 titles created 3 months ago Title: Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead (1990) 7.6/10 Want to share IMDb's rating on your own site? Use the HTML below. You must be a registered user to use the IMDb rating plugin. 3 wins & 2 nominations. See more awards » Photos Edit Storyline Showing events from the point of view of two minor characters from Hamlet, men who have no control over their destiny, this film examines fate and asks if we can ever really know what's going on? Are answers as important as the questions? Will Rosencrantz and Guildenstern (or Guildenstern and Rosencrantz) manage to discover the source of Hamlet's malaise as requested by the new king? Will the mysterious players who are strolling around the castle reveal the secrets they evidently know? And whose serve is it?

Written by Mark Thompson <mrt@oasis.icl.co.uk> 8 February 1991 (USA) See more » Also Known As: Did You Know? Trivia Originally cast with Sean Connery as the Player King, Sting and Roger Rees and Robert Lindsay as the titular leads, it collapsed when Connery had to undergo a serious throat operation. See more » Goofs Throughout the movie there are scenes where day suddenly changes to night and vice versa. This is a running gag of Tom Stoppard plays which often have "time jumps" written into the stage directions. See more » Quotes [Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are riding horses down a path - they pause] Rosencrantz : [to Guildenstern] Umm, uh... [Guildenstern rides away, and Rosencrantz follows. Rosencrantz spots a gold coin on the ground] Rosencrantz : [to horse] Whoa - whoa, whoa. [Gets off horse and starts flipping the coin] Rosencrantz : Hmmm. Heads. Heads. Heads. Heads. Heads. Heads. Heads. Heads. Heads. Heads.

Heads. Heads. Heads. Heads. Heads. Heads. Heads. Heads. [Guildenstern grabs the coin, checks both sides, then tosses it back to Rosencrantz] plot within a plot within a plot... 26 August 2004 | by grlwndr23 (chicago, USA) – See all my reviews This clever screenplay by Tom Stoppard challenges the viewer to listen and watch closely as the Shakespeare tragedy Hamlet is turned on its ear via taking the perspective of the oblivious rhetorics, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. There are multiple 'plot within plot' twists which intersect and skew at will, sometimes creating a surreal experience for the observer. The script is brilliant, full of double-entendres and mixed reactions executed superbly by Tim Roth and Gary Oldman, along with a solid supporting cast (including American actor Richard Dreyfus). Stoppard felt that the title characters, messengers in the original play, were under represented and so examines their possible perspectives in the tale by way of exploring their destiny and their lack-of-awareness of it.

Stunning and hilarious wordplay with excellent repartee between Oldman and Roth. Refreshing and creative spin of the tale of Denmark's 'melancholy prince'. 53 of 61 people found this review helpful. Was this review helpful to you? Yes Review: 'Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead' | Backstage Review: 'Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead' By Gretchen C. Van Benthuysen | Posted June 14, 2006, midnight Share: It always helps when your title characters are brilliantly portrayed. In the opening production of the Shakespeare Theatre of New Jersey's 44th season, Tom Stoppard's Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, Sean Mahan as Rosencrantz and David Conrad as Guildenstern (or is it the other way around?) are like two expert Ping-Pong players in a championship match.

Under Paul Mullins' superb direction, these actors carry the two hour and 40 minute play with ease, volleying Stoppard's lines back and forth as their characters from Hamlet seem to wait in the wings somewhere, wondering how they got to wherever they are and what it is they are supposed to be doing there. The playing space consists of a small square stage bathed in cold white light that becomes warm yellows only when other actors enter. Even when Rosencrantz and Guildenstern (who are sometimes confused themselves about who is who) attempt to depart the space, they are stopped by their limited knowledge of where they are and where they would go if they could leave. They are, of course, in the play Hamlet, and although these courtiers are summoned by King Claudius (Damian Buzzerio) and Queen Gertrude (Mary Dierson) to find out what ails the Danish prince (Anthony Marble), they haven't a clue how to get that information out of him. The more they try, the more they are frustrated. "When is this going to end? That is the question," Guildenstern cries.

Stoppard's superb writing in this early work (it won the 1968 Tony for Best Play) shows his love and knowledge of Shakespeare and presents it to the audience in such a way that we can't help but to be swept along. The playwright makes us feel smart by helping us understand his "inside" jokes about Hamlet, and, in case we're getting a little lost, there's the Player (Andrew Weems) to help us out, too. Weems, in fact, nearly steals the play from Mahan and Conrad with his intonations, gestures, gyrations, and facial expressions -- the Player is the only character who really seems to know what's going on. He parodies Polonius (Robert Lanchester) when describing the various forms of drama that the Tragedians (Ashton Crosby, Travis Horseman, Jason Jamerson, David James McDonald, Tom Robenolt) offer. And he's always ready to perform for Rosencrantz and Guildenstern: "Two for an audience is small, for voyeurs just right," he says. Toward the end of Stoppard's three-act romp, the Player screams in frustration: "We're actors!

We're the opposite of people!" All this behind-the-scenes looking at Hamlet and at theatre in general is written by the man who wrote Shakespeare in Love for the screen. Just the kind of genius we associate with actor-director Mullins. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead runs May 30-June 25 at the Shakespeare Theatre of New Jersey, 36 Madison Ave., Madison, N.J. Tickets (973) 408-5600. Website: . Read Also:

Question: Who wrote the play Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead?
Answer: TOM STOPPARD